


A Previous Madness

by Rulerofthefakeempire



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, I'm Not Ashamed, I'm still pretending that Civil War didn't happen, Illusions, Kid Loki is totally a little shit, M/M, Magical Loki, No judging beyond this point, SO, i just want everyone to be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9264746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rulerofthefakeempire/pseuds/Rulerofthefakeempire
Summary: Loki accidentally turns himself back into his eight year old self after being captured by Tony Stark. Which leaves the gang in the unusual position of being suddenly responsible for a de-aged god of illusions and lies, who cannot seem to stop trying to escape.





	

The boy had destruction in his bloodstream and terror in his soul and it was like he was born knee deep in tragedy. So he stood very, very still and tried to pretend that everything was alright. Maybe it was a test, maybe someone was testing him, maybe this was just mama trying to confuse him, teach him a lesson. He held his breath and didn’t move.

A man with a beard looked at him and he looked back and tried to think of things that he’d done wrong recently. He couldn’t think of anything so he didn’t move and didn’t breath and he wanted to scream or run or something, but he couldn’t because this was obviously a test, he needed to learn, but he couldn’t because he didn’t know what he was meant to be learning and he felt very far away from everything.

And then the man with the beard reached towards him and because he wasn’t breathing, he fainted.

…

His head hurt when he woke up, and he was breathing again, but not on purpose. He woke up like that. He sniffed and the air didn’t smell like it was meant to. It smelt like chemicals and… different chemicals. He was very still. There was no man with a beard this time and he couldn’t think properly, like his thoughts were going in circles and maybe mama was still tricking him.

He didn’t feel like he was being tricked, so he moved. And when he looked there was a woman pointing something at him and he stopped because something in the way she stood told him that the something she was holding could kill him if she wanted it to. He stared at her and she stared back like he and the man with the beard had done only the man with the beard hadn’t looked like he had known what was going on and the woman looked like she knew everything in the universe.

His eyes darted and he was being tricked. But what if he wasn’t. What if he wasn’t? What if he had been stolen? Or was a long way from home? What if they had done something to him? Or Thor? Where was Thor? Thor was always there. He began to panic and his eyes darted, but the woman was still pointing the thing at him and he felt every defense he had rise into his chest.

He darted like his eyes had done and the woman yelled at him. He couldn’t comprehend what she had said because he was running because she was going to kill him and he was going to die. And then a door opened, or maybe it wasn’t a door, a something opened and he darted though it, until he wasn’t. Arms wrapped around him and he gasped and struggled and screamed. He screamed as loud as he could and struggled and hit and bit and hissed. And the arms let go of him because he made them, he made the eyes they belonged to see fire on its skin and a pain like it was burning, and there was a yell and he was going. His feet pounded the ground, and he skidded around a corner nearly falling. He recovered and still ran and then he ran into a door that got opened in front of him.

Skin was ruptured and he went skidding back like a ball on a wall. Tears ran down his face and blood dribbled down from his temple where his head had been struck by the latch. He pressed his hand to the wound and his breath heaved in and out of his chest and he couldn’t think, he could focus and everything hurt and he was so _scared._

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

There was a hand on his shoulder and he shuddered away from it and he hadn’t known before that he could move that fast, but he could. His eyes connected and a blond man was looking at him, and he looked concerned and confused. He was reaching out, all non-threatening and all and he could hear a running and a falling and a yelling somewhere from behind him, from where he had run and fallen and yelled. So he reached out in his sobs, because he couldn’t stop.

Papa would want him to not be sobbing, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t know where he was, or who anyone was, and he thought that maybe he had been stolen because people kept pointing things at him and this was the only person who looked as confused as he did about all of this. So he fell into him, because this wasn’t a trick and he was so scared.

“Woah, woah.” He didn’t know what that meant. “You’re okay, you’re okay. Come on, I have a first aid kit in my room.” He didn’t know what that was, but the man who was concerned was standing and moving and found his hand to hold. He was lead and the man who was concerned kept him close while he tried not to weep.

The man who was concerned sat him down on one of the pillow seats that he had woken up on.

“Stay there, I’ll get the first aid kit.”

He sniffed and wiped at his nose with his sleeve and looked around. He could hear the other people outside the room like phantoms and he watched the door and waited to be brought in or attacked or something. Or anything. And when he was done with that he looked at the concerned man, who was rooting through a big, upright case with a little green box in his hand. He was tall, and blond and maybe he would have looked like a warrior if he didn’t look so concerned.

His head pounded, everything pounded, but his head pounded especially. A little blood dripped in to his eye and he wiped it away with his sleeve, and when he looked back up, the blond man was coming towards him, with his little green box and a blue thing. He sat down on the table across from the long, cushion seat, across from him. He smiled, but he still looked concerned.

He began to unpack his little box and it was filled with weird things, but Loki didn’t ask, because he had other things to ask. He leaned forward a little and sniffed.

“Where are we?” He whispered.

The concerned man looked up at him, and looked more concerned than before.

“Stark Tower… New York?” He didn’t know what that meant and by the concerned man’s expression, he was apparently meant to. He must have shown his confusion on his face because the concerned man continued. “America?” That shed no light. The concerned man raised his eyebrows. “ _Earth_?” None of this meant anything to him. He swallowed thickly. And he thought then about making the man see fire. The door was still open; he could get through it. But he didn’t.

The concerned man looked at him very seriously and seemed to come to a conclusion.

“You must be a very long way from home, kiddo.”

And then he stopped talking and that was weird because Loki thought that there was meant to be more, explanations were in order. But he held his tongue. And he let the concerned man patch him up with his weird things in his little green box.

“Mama hasn’t taught me how to heal yet,” he told the man, “she says that I’m not good enough at controlling it yet.” He thought that the concerned man ought to know this, that he wasn’t incapable, it’s just he hadn’t been taught yet. He was beginning to feel sort of numb. The panic was wearing off.

He looked at his hands between his knees and thought that maybe he would just run away. He wouldn’t even need to make the concerned man see fire, just slip away when he turned his back. And he would turn his back; they all turn their backs eventually. The concerned man had said this was a tower, and all towers have a ground floor. He would find his way home. He had to.

“What’s you’re name, kid?’

He felt like he was being carried out with the tide, being drawn further and further out to sea.

“Loki,” he whispered.

And then there was nothing, just his eyes closed and the concerned men pressing his head down to a pillow and telling him to go to sleep now.

…

“I’m not sure. I’d probably guess that he’s about eight. Maybe younger.” He shrugged and shut the door behind him. “He was really scared.”

Tony ran his hands of his face and rubbed at his eyes. “Yeah, Nat pointed a gun at him. Freaked him out.” He sat down and put his feet up on the coffee table like he didn’t realize it was an antique. Steve didn’t mention it.

“Any idea where he came from?”

Tony stroked his beard but what ever he was trying to express, he was faking.

“As far as I can tell due to an analysis Jarvis did, its not that kid Loki got transported here from his usual time, but that adult Loki went back, he just didn’t leave this time. He is as he was then, an eight year old through and through.”

…

He woke up in a bedroom with door that wasn’t locked. He could tell as soon as he woke up and he would have known if it was locked, but wasn’t. So he left.

He crept along the wall to the door like he was being seen. He slipped out the door and didn’t breath and didn’t think, just moved. He needed to leave, he had to find his way home, make sure that nobody else pointed anything at him. Papa would be proud of him when he made it home, commend him for his resourcefulness. Even if he weren’t in the same realm, he would manage it.

The door squeaked and he froze, every muscle in his little body seized still.

The man in the kitchen didn’t look at him, but Loki looked at him. Standing there in the concerned man’s kitchen, over a fire pit that wasn’t a pit.

“Hey, Stevie. I thought you might be sleeping, so I made eggs-”

And then he looked at Loki standing at the door, still as a stone in a river and if it had been anyone else Loki would have made them see fire, but as soon as he locked eyes with the man in the concerned man’s kitchen he saw two people, two people in one body. And he could see scars around his mind, where the two of them had been torn apart, going from one person to two. And fire would hurt him too much.

“Woah.”

He still didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t understand what any of this meant, and he kept waking up in places he didn’t recognize.

There was silence and he didn’t speak. The two faced man looked between his fire pit that wasn’t a fire pit and Loki and Loki felt like he was being weighed up in a decision he couldn’t see.

“Do you, uh, want some eggs?”

And he was about to go for the door, he didn’t need any fire, he could just run, find the ground floor to this tower, but then he hesitated and he felt hesitation in his bones and in his stomach. And before he knew it he was sitting on a tall chair and the two faced man was lying down a plate in front of him with toast on it, and then eggs on the toast and he was so hungry. And he had had manners before the food was set down in front of him, good manners, manners developed over many years, and then suddenly they were all gone. He shoveled food into his mouth and the two faced man slid a glass of orange juice towards him and he guzzled it. The two faced man must have thought him distracted, because he went over to the wall next to the door where a box with buttons was affixed to the wall. He spoke into it.

“Hey, Tony?”

Loki listened carefully.

“Yeah, Buck?”

“So, like, while I was away, did Steve, like… adopt a kid? And then forget to feed him?”

“Aw, shit. Okay, just don’t freak him out. I’ll be down in a moment.”

He was finished with his juice by the time that the two faced man came back. He pushed the glass towards him.

“More?”

“Sure, squirt.” He didn’t know what that was and the two faced man got the juice out of the upright case and poured it into the glass. He swallowed it down as soon as it was given to him and he had to wipe his upper lip on his sleeve where the blood had dried.

“Who’s Steve?” He wanted to know, he wanted to know everything and everything felt like secrets and he hated secrets. The man scratched the back of his neck with metal fingers and Loki was intent.

“Uh, he’s the guy that lives here.”

Which meant that the concerned man was Steve.

“Who’s Tony?”

“He’s in charge.”

Loki knew that wasn’t true, the only person here who was in charge here was him.

…

“Would you just stop moving?! Jesus Christ! Calm down!”

The kid writhed in his arms, squirming and twisting and screaming. He bit down on a forearm and was thrown to the floor. He bolted towards the door where the concerned man, Steve stood with his open arms. Loki leapt into them and he was crying again because the man with the beard had told him that he couldn’t go home. And when he had gone for the door the man with the beard had run at him again, and grabbed him around the waist.

He sobbed into the concerned man’s shirt and he was certain now, he had been stolen. Mama had warned him about this, so had papa and now it was over. He had been stolen and they were going to kill him, and he didn’t even know how he had gotten there. He had panic in his bones and his little chest heaved and heaved because he was so scared. He wasn’t ready to be stolen and he was still so little. He didn’t even know how to get home if he did escape.

The concerned man rubbed his back while he sobbed and sobbed. The concerned man swayed, and cooed and told him comforting things like “you’re safe”, “its okay” and “he just doesn’t make good decisions, he doesn’t mean you any harm” until he stopped sobbing and just wheezed and sniffed a little. He didn’t move from his position, he liked being held, made him feel that it wasn’t his responsibility to figure out where to go or what to do or how to leave.

The concerned man sat down on his long cushion seat,

He heard the concerned man speak after the clink of a glass.

“It’s okay, I don’t need any juice.”

There was a pause and Loki listened to it.

“It’s not for you.”

“Oh.”

He turned and smiled for the two faced man and he was glad that he hadn’t made him see fire because he was nice. And his belly was full and that was better than it had been before.

The two faced man smiled back and the man with a beard sat down in a cushioned seat across from them. Loki eyed him suspiciously and the man with a beard eyed him back. He adjusted himself so that he was sitting next to the concerned man so that he could face the threat head on. He sniffed and the bearded man spoke.

He leant down on his knees and looked at him directly. The concerned man put his arm around his shoulders and rubbed his knee.

“My name is Tony.” He said, and Loki didn’t think that he looked like the sort of person who he would put in charge. “The guy with the metal arm is Bucky.” Loki took the time to look at the two faced man; get a good look at him. All kind of shaggy and funny looking and full of rage.

“And I’m Steve,” the concerned man said.

And he already knew that and didn’t care, because their names meant nothing to him. Nothing meant anything to him except a map. But he didn’t know how to read maps, that was on the list of things mama hadn’t taught him yet.

He stared out at them and said nothing.

“We want you to know, you’re in Midgard. We’re trying really hard to get you home.” It was the man, Steve, who spoke, looking at him carefully. “We know that you keep trying to escape-”

“And we’d really appreciate it if you would, like, stop.”

He decided to go for the door and the man, Steve, grabbed him by the collar and held him so that he couldn’t move. Loki made him think that his fingertips were turning blue with cold.

But then the man with two faces held onto him until he calmed down.


End file.
